Imagine a pair of high heel shoes that can change appearance to match your outfits. The Volvorii shoes are just that. Featuring an e-Ink display and a Bluetooth module, they can change their look to some degree at the touch of button. Just… connect your shoes to your smartphone and pick from any of the available patterns that might best suit your outfit that day. Granted the panel is in black and white, and it’s not the entirety of the shoe that’s covered, but still. Being able to switch up your footwear’s look in a couple of seconds is functionality you don’t find elsewhere. The shoe even comes with two fasteners (one in front, the other in back) that allow you to further customize the look, allowing you to add ankle straps or a monogrammed plate or jewelry. It’s a really cool concept, but one that will cost you a $249 pledge with a December delivery date… if the project is successful, which it is far from being at the moment.

If you’re out in the wild for a long period of time, you’re gonna start smelling like a witch’s armpits in no time if you don’t wash your clothes now and then. You could resort to the age old washboard, or even older beating-your-stuff-against-rocks-near-a-stream method, but it’s the 21st century, brother. There’s stuff like the Scrubba bag to help you out. Out since 2012, the wash bag looks like a simple waterproof bag, but the inside is lined with hundreds of “nodules” that scrub your clothes clean. Just toss all your laundry in there with some water and soap, and start mashing. There’s a little window to let you see how your clothes are coming along. Then when you’re done, empty the sudsy dirty water, refill with clean, and rinse. It’s a simple, easy-to-carry solution for any backpacker or camper or nature lover. Weighing in at just 5 oz., it allows you to pack much lighter than you normally would since you don’t have to bring clothes to last you the entirety of your trip. It’s $53 for one bag.

It’s not that we’re huge fans of Ping Pong or anything, but the thought of a bunch of us being able to play on the same table at the same time is kind of appealing. We’re guessing it’s the same train of thought that got Singapore artist Lee Wen to make the above Ping-Pong Go Round table… back in 1998. He’s been exhibiting it at various art galleries across Asia since, going so far as making a few models for some museums that were requesting them. It accommodates up to 15 players, although we imagine those in the middle might feel a little crowded. And it also apparently isn’t being manufactured so you can’t get a game on unless you travel to one of the few places where it is still being exhibited. Still, the concept is interesting.

BBQs come in all shapes and sizes, and not all of them are practical. The typical round grills you see in parks during the summer are just fine for cooking your meats. But not so great at stacking efficiently in the trunk, and even less so at being incognito. Not that we can think of a single good reason for why’d you’d want to walk around with a BBQ disguised as a briefcase, but now you know this product exists. The Briefcase BBQ is a 12 1/2″ H x 8 3/4″ W x 2 3/4″ D portable grill that weighs 4lbs., and uses charcoal for fuel. It’s $79.

Think for a minute about how much energy is wasted in a car. All that gas it burns to get it rolling is almost entirely dissipated and lost as heat in the brakes as it slows back down, while the rest goes to combatting air resistance and drivetrain inefficiencies. By some accounts “only about 14%–30% of the energy from the fuel you put in a conventional vehicle is used to move it down the road.” Newer electric vehicles have started harvesting some of that energy back through regenerative braking, but Goodyear is taking things a couple of steps further by developing a special tire that itself generates power. The concept is called BHO3, and it takes both the friction heat as well as the deformations the tire undergoes while driving to generate an electric current, which is then presumably fed back into the car’s batteries.

To do this, the BHO3 is lined with a fishnet pattern of thermo/piezoelectric material. This net turns the heat into electrical current, and its piezoelectric properties also allow it to harvest energy from the tire as it deforms during driving. To keep the tire from overheating, there’s also a cooling system in the sidewalls.

It’s only a concept at the moment so don’t expect to see it on the road any time soon. But it’s nice to know people are constantly working to wean us off fossil fuels.

We go through life pressing buttons, and we never think twice about the time and effort that goes into their design. But there are people who do, and Siemens is behind an interesting campaign meant to raise awareness of their line of sophisticated push buttons. It’s called Sirius Act, and in the video above, you can see their efforts to showcase their ‘star’. Granted, the video is a little mysterious and doesn’t pontificate on the product itself, but it’s meant to pique your interest rather than sell a button outright. As a matter of fact, given that Siemens’ modern push buttons will have mostly industrial applications, it’s not the campaign’s goal to get you personally invested in the buttons, but rather to make you aware that there are good people working tirelessly to improve upon a technology that generally goes unheralded.

So, after giving the video a look, and following the link below, the general takeaway should be that Siemens’ elegantly designed push buttons and signalling devices are “the perfect embodiment of style, intelligence, and physical toughness.” There are tons of different kinds, from toggle switches and potentiometers, to mushroom push buttons and sensor switches. And more importantly, you should come away with the knowledge that there are lots of dedicated people working on their constant refinement.

Think of the Jamstik Wireless Smart Guitar as a regular guitar, only evolved. Instead of using old analog pickups, or an even older acoustic resonance box, the device connects to your Apple device and interfaces with any of the available music apps. This gives you a world of possibilities, along with a bunch of portability convenience not available with traditional instruments. It features real strings, which is where the similarities apparently end.

So it looks like the time is ripe for virtual reality once again. The Oculus Rift started this latest wave of interest, but it’s now been picked up from several other companies, like Samsung. That’s all well and good, but once you acquire a VR headset… what do you do with it? Well, you could eventually play this cool game called “Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes”, by Steel Crate Games, a small Ottawa-based team of indie developers. How does it work?

One player puts on a virtual reality headset and finds themselves trapped in a (virtual) room with a randomly generated (virtual) time bomb. On the bomb are a variety of puzzles that need to be solved – but this player has no idea how to solve them. Instead, they must rely on their friends in the real world who have the manual describing how to solve all sorts of puzzles. The catch is that each side doesn’t know what the other sees. Now it’s up to everybody to communicate what they see clearly and quickly – did we mention there’s a bomb? It gets loud, it gets tense, but keep talking and maybe, just maybe, nobody explodes.

You might think the game would get old quick, but the developers insist that the random nature of each new puzzle, as well as the dense manual packed with reams of information would give the game enormous replay value. We’d like to believe them but we’re not sure when we’ll get a chance, nor for how much. It’s being developed for the Oculus Rift and the Samsung Gear VR. Still, it’s an interesting concept and we’ll circle back in a few months to see where things stand.

OhGizmo! is a frequently updated blog that focuses on covering items that will appeal to a very specific and often very passionate audience: the geek. Aside from the fare of innovative consumer electronic products, the reader can expect to find news about geek culture, absurd inventions, awe inspiring technology, and an ever growing assortment of articles that we like to think fit within our view of what we’re calling the Geek Lifestyle.